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LOS ANGELES – Were Lane Kiffin there, fans would have stomped cups and booed and wondered what kind of idiot coach lets go of a 21-point second-half lead, and has to grind out desperate first downs to win at all.

But the theme of Thursday night at the Coliseum was that Lane Kiffin was not there. A football program had been de-Kiffinated. There was calm.

USC’s 38-31 victory over Arizona Thursday night – most of it anyway – had the feel of wrongs being righted, cuts being healed, suppressed tension channeled into combustion.

The interim coach, Ed Orgeron, loosened up the playbook and, really, the whole operation. He let position coaches make personnel decisions. He had the coaches leave the office early to get more sleep, so they could be more animated at practice.

He gathered the players, and their families, into a large circle on the Coliseum floor, before anybody got taped or put on a jersey, and he talked about team, and then a pastor led a prayer.

USC’s 2013 season means something now. The good vibe might not be enough to beat Stanford, Notre Dame or UCLA, but there is a reason to play that wasn’t there 11 days ago, when Pat Haden pulled Kiffin aside at LAX.

Take Javorius “Buck” Allen, for example.

He followed his high school teammate, Jawanza Starling, from Lincoln High in Tallahassee, Fla., all the way across the country.

He got his nickname because there was an older player on the team named Javorius, and he became known as the “young buck.” He had been a prize recruit until his junior year at Lincoln, when he broke his femur in the end zone, but then he built himself back up and got Kiffin’s attention. He is 6-foot-1 and 216 and brings every bit of it with him.

Yet Allen ran six times, total, in 2012. Then he ran 14 times in the first five games. Here, Tre Madden went down, and running backs coach Tommie Robinson reached into the depth chart, and Allen ran six times for 37 yards and two touchdowns. On the first one, he helicoptered the Arizona line and landed in the end zone, Sam Cunningham style.

“It says in the book of God that good things come to those who wait,” Allen said. “And I’ve been waiting.

“I’m a patient person. Sure, it gets frustrating, but I didn’t think about going anywhere (transferring). And now Coach O has made sure we have some fun. At this time I don’t care who gets the rock as long as we win.”

Freshman Ty Isaac splashed into the pool with five carries for 36 yards, and Cody Kessler dashed for 34 yards on one carry, longest for a Trojan QB since Carson Palmer in 2001.

But at the end, when Arizona found new sinkholes in USC’s secondary on every possession and closed to within seven points, Orgeron turned it over to Silas Redd, along with offensive linemen who have been recipients instead of attackers.

“Two weeks ago we challenged them to be a mean, nasty offensive line, a USC offensive line,” Orgeron said. “Marcus Allen came around and talked to them. Tonight we saw some of that.”

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